Hero
by LiB3RAtED
Summary: The odds are against you,he was told.You'll never succeed.But he had more than determination.Life had played him the foul card all this while,butnow he realised he had always had something more powerful.He had always failedbefore,but not this time...
1. Prologue

Prologue

The leaves whipped her skin as she ran, tearing through the undergrowth like a wild fawn running from hunters. She _was_ being hunted. Her bare feet barely touched the ground as she flew, the wind so strong and harsh, cruelly blowing in the wrong direction, to her disadvantage. A gun went off in the background, and in a flood of desperation, her legs, in their confusion gave way, succumbing to the enemy force of gravity, as she realised too late that there was no longer solid ground beneath her feet.

down she plunged, into the darkness of the abyss below her, darker than the starless night sky she had blindly fallen beneath…

Something howled in the distance. Then for the moment, there was silence.


	2. The Winds of Change

1

The Winds of Change

"Alex! Alex- GET YOUR BUTT IN HERE NOW!!!"

Great. Not now. Not today. Just great.

"Good-for-nothing piece of trash…"

He hardly noticed the barrage of profanities that came after that. He was used to it after all. She was drunk again. You couldn't really take anything she said seriously when she was in that state anyway. But that doesn't stop you getting fed up.

Alex took one last look at the moon, sitting high above him in the pitch black night sky. He sighed, and swung by a single hand, swiftly down from the roof to the balcony of the top-floor apartment. His feet made no more sound than the feet of a cat landing on a carpet after jumping off a chair. He slid in silently through the billowing net curtains. The wind was quite strong tonight. He slid down the banister and walked calmly into the kitchen, a little left to the stairs, where his aunt was still cursing and blinding (as they put it).

"Where'sss my money..." she hissed, giving him a side-look of suspicion with a beady eye.

"What money, Auntie?" He said with a coolness that could put ice to shame.

"DON' ARGUE WITH ME YOU SSLIMY RATTTT!!!!" She spat back.

Alex sighed, for lack of what else to say. _Today again, ma tatie? _

It was like this as often as she was home. He knew no details of her comings and goings during the days and nights she was gone, but he was thankful for those times of serenity. At his age, whatever that was, he shouldn't still be living with her anyway. But life was difficult, and so too, unfortunately, was his aunt. She spent most of her hours at home drunk and in a fragile state as he had always said in her defence. But this 'fragile state' of hers made her make mean decisions. He couldn't work, because his aunt needed him at home to help her (or so she said, when she was sane), and she had stopped him from going to college for reasons unknown to him or anyone else for that matter. She had placed his whole life on hold.

Now one might wonder why a young, intelligent and strong young man such as this would let a woman like her rule his life like a dictator over a helpless country. In fact, there were times when he had asked himself the same thing. His good nature was not the excuse, for even that would know when to say no. The answer he would always come back to would be the weak will within him. He was more than alone in the world. She was all he had, and she wasn't even his real aunt. She hadn't always been like this. He tried to remember something similar to love she had shown him when he was a child. But even that faded. She had only been like that when the social workers, "no-good, dirty stinkin' alley cats" as she called them, were around. Once they were gone, she was back to her boozing and abusing. No, there was not even an atom of care for him in her heart. Yet this was all he had ever known. This was all he'd ever had. Well, at least since he could remember.

"ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, SLUG?!" The Wicked Witch screamed.

He remained silent, in a completely different dimension, still lost in his thoughts. The only shred of a memory of love he had ever experienced, was in a dream. A recurring dream he had, yet seemed so real…

A saucepan came whistling toward his head- with reflexes sharper than those of a cat, he dodged it- _What on earth?_

She was undeterred, and the puzzled look on his face did no damage to her resolve. Spoons, dishes, knives and forks all came hurtling toward him, and with a somewhat clumsy yet accurate aim, he deflected them, using one arm at all times to protect his face. _She's finally lost it._ He said to himself. _Note to self- don't die_.

All the while, she was shouting obscenities at every instant. At first it was all her usual mindless babble- but then, she actually started making sense-

"-useless orphan! Why my doorstep, huh? OH SURE, the money was ok, they sent all the right amounts, just until it pleased them to stop! I didn't need and still don' need no stinkin' kid! Feed him this they said, make sure that they said. Cobblers!"(Or less polite words to that effect) "You sicken me! All of you science-types! Why don't you all just die! Go home to your real mother, orphan!"

The lid of a saucepan barely missed his neck as he straightened up, time slowed down. The nick of the blunt edge stung, and he bled (Metal, even blunt metal at that speed is lethal). She opened her mouth to say something else, but the cry of ricocheting bullets echoed from the sides of the room. She fell to the floor, her body swimming in a pool of its own, fresh blood. The sniper's gun fell silent.

He stood, a mere hollow corpse of himself, barely breathing as he gazed blindly at the body on the kitchen floor.

The kitchen he had carefully mopped and scrubbed each day of his life in this house. The kitchen his aunt would not permit him to leave until it was spotless all those nights of his childhood, though he had homework. The kitchen in which his aunt made him cook for her all these years. His aunt lay dead on the floor of that kitchen.

Apparently, it wasn't yet over, for the echo of a gun being cocked in the distance rang in his ears. He heard the molecules of air flee before the bullets as they approached. He threw himself to the floor, and didn't move until the torrent of bullets was over.

Whoever had done that wanted him dead.

Very dead.

In this piercing silence, the wind blew gently through the window, before which Alex's 'Aunt' had been standing not too long ago.


End file.
